The IEEE Standards Board this week unanimously approved the 802.3ah standard for 'Ethernet in the first mile,' .
The approval came the same week as a final approval of 802.17, the Resilient Packet Ring standard.
An original project authorization request (PAR) was approved in July 2001 for the EFM group to work on three areas: point-to-point copper over existing copper plant at 10-Mbit/sec speeds at distances to 750 meters; point-to-point optical fiber at speeds up to 1 Gbit/sec at distances out to 10 km; and point-to-multipoint fiber at the same speeds and distances (passive, or EPON, implementations).
After the original PAR approval, the task force added higher-layer functions for operations, administration, and maintenance to its task list.
Read more at EETimes
